


play the strings of your

by snsk



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Romance, Zombie Apocalypse, Zombies, roadtrip on a dirtbike
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-31
Updated: 2013-07-31
Packaged: 2017-12-21 23:04:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/906007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snsk/pseuds/snsk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>scott has a getaway motorbike, and isaac is a zombie, but that doesn't mean they can't slow dance in the burnt out shell of a golden field, does it?</p>
            </blockquote>





	play the strings of your

Scott doesn't really like to think about it - he doesn't like to, but he does, think about where it all started, wonder about that first miniscule virus drifting and settling like a dust mote into a thumping vein, into redredred blood.

Adapting, mutating to fit humans. Not its fault, after all. Evolving to survive. Just like the rest of us.

Scott thinks about where it started for him, too.

It started for him one unassuming overcast day in English when Stiles got three missed calls and then a series of urgent texts and drew in a short, sharp breath, and said, "We have to go, Scotty," and Scott went because Scotty? only happened when Stiles is helpless or distracted, and Stiles wasn't distracted right now, Stiles was herding them out of the classroom and saying "How many?" on the phone with probably Derek, and "Oh, god," and "Okay. Get him, get Melissa."

They were almost out the gates when Scott realized, "Isaac."

"They're coming," Stiles said, already getting into the Jeep, "please- please, Scott, Derek says they're heading towards the school, right about now, just call him and tell him to leave-"

"I have to make sure he's safe," said Scott, "I'll catch up with you - loft, alright? You go make sure my mom and your dad are safe first-"

Stiles nodded distractedly, and said, "Hurry, just get out of here," yelled, "keep your ass safe, Scott!" as he sped off to formulate a plan that'd save lives, that was what Stiles did.

Scott broke off into a run towards the school, but he could already hear screaming inside, terrified and agonized, was the problem.

He went inside anyway.

 

It started for Isaac in Chemistry, when zombies burst in looking remarkably like the flute section of the Beacon Hills High marching band, and turned him.

Scott arrived three minutes and twenty two seconds after that, and Isaac's eyes were already redredred bloodshot, and he had started to shake the shivers of the turned, and his pulse had stopped and hollowed out and froze but he hadn't attacked Scott, he'd followed him onto his bike with steady shivery feet and they'd left Beacon Hills, they'd ridden and never stopped.

 

Scott doesn't like to think about it, but his zombie is silhouetted in moonlight, looking up into the night sky, so beautiful, and they just come to him, the memories.

It's been six days. He supposes they can't even be called memories yet.

He'd called Stiles back yesterday, before the lines had died for good. Stiles and Derek and everyone were underground, in a series of mazes the Hales apparently hadn't been joking about.

"Come back," Stiles had said, an order.

"Keep my mom safe for me," Scott said, a request.

"Bring him back if you have to," Stiles bargained.

"You'll kill him," Scott said, not accusing, just a fact. They didn't say the unspoken _or he'll turn, full-fledged and kill all of you_ , because the virus lay dormant in Isaac for now, a Russian Roulette, a deadly Schrodinger.

"Who knows," said Scott, "This road trip might be a good thing! I might finally find the time to watch Star Wars!"

"Fuck you, Scott," Stiles said, his voice broken.

"I love you, bro," said Scott. "Live long and prosper, and all that."

He hung up.

He could still hear it, anyway:

"That's Star Trek, you fucker," said Stiles.

 

He nudges Isaac with his toe. "What're you thinking about?"

Isaac turns to him. He's more angular, somehow, with the virus: all fine defined bones and lankiness, a lie of delicacy.

"How I'm not hungry," he says slowly.

He doesn't say: Yet.

It's warning enough, a you-can-save-yourself.

"I, for one," says Scott, "am starving, wanna raid a Nando's? It can't all be bad yet."

Isaac sighs, lifts his hands from where he'd placed them on the sidewalk and dusts them off on his jeans. "Might as well," he says. "Chicken might be able to satisfy my cannibalistic cravings for good, who knows."

They raid a Nando's. They find cold chicken in the freezer, and Scott's zombie cooks it for him - or, at least, he places it in a vat of oil, turns the fire on and hopes for the best. It turns out oily and undercooked. Scott swears it's divine.

 

The shopping mall proclaims that half of its prices are slashed. The banner which informs the public of said discount has itself been slashed into two.

They enter the record store: Scott's got his gun drawn out and Isaac, Isaac isn't worried, the other zees will avoid him now he's been bitten. But there's nobody inside, anyway, nobody needs music in the middle of a zombie apocalypse.

Scott does. 

He finds an album his mother used to play when he was very small, after his dad had left. She'd play it for hours, sometimes crying, sometimes dancing, continuously healing. He strokes its cover and leaves three bucks on the counter. It was fifty percent off of six bucks anyway, probably, but people tell the most awful lies to relieve their conscience.

Isaac's touching the needle of a record player when Scott finds him. The needle looks like it could pierce his skin, draw blood, another terrible untruth. Zombies don't bleed. Zombies' brains explode, when you blow their heads off, but zombies don't bleed.

Still, Isaac looks a bit like he's bleeding, all over the record player. The generator lights are harsh on his pale skin. The awkward crick of his neck looks like its exhausted. He looks sick, virus-ridden, ready to fully lose his mind. 

"C'mon," Scott says. Isaac looks up.

"I want to go to the arcade," his zombie says.

Scott tells him: "Okay."

 

So they do, and Isaac wins himself a huge stuffed platypus, or claims he does, after managing to knock down all of the pins after eleven tries. He gives it to Scott.

"What do I need with a huge stuffed platypus?" asks Scott.

"His name's Zachary," Isaac says reproachfully and Scott apologizes to Zachary, drags him along as Isaac shoots mini-hoops, whacks a couple of moles, and sets a high score at PacMan.

 

They sleep in the lounge of a five-star hotel because they can't find any of the room cards. Which, after spending thirty minutes searching, Isaac finds amusing.

"Of course," he says, and Scott starts laughing too, because yeah. Of course.

It's cold; the heater isn't working. There's the body of a Russian cleaner between the revolving doors; he's started to smell a bit, but not enough for it to be a distraction. They drape themselves onto the lounge sofas.

"Night," Scott mumbles, sleepy.

There's a silence before Isaac answers, a silence like there's been five times, five nights before this one, where Isaac weighs all the possibilities, the different ways he could fully turn in his sleep and devour the only other living body in the building.

"Goodnight, Scott," he says, and Scott's already drifting off.

Isaac isn't.

Isaac tosses and turns and gasps restlessly on the other couch, and Scott gets up, watches the moonlight from the broken glazed window bathe Isaac in luminosity, and settles into the spaces in between Isaac's limbs.

Isaac snuffles, and sleeps.

 

It's still dark when Scott gets up.

"C'mon, 'zak," he says, tugging at a random limb.

The field is empty and black and sooty. Scott wonders who won the battle here, and where the bodies are.

The sun is starting to rise, lingering and reluctant.

He places the CD player on the ground, and turns it on. Slow, desperate strains begin to curl out into the dawn.

Scott's zombie stands with his hands in his jacket pockets, surveying this human folly.

"Would you like to dance?" Scott asks him, head tilted in enquiry.

"Oh, why not," Isaac says, and gives his hand to Scott, who leads him to the clearing. "This is the closest I'll ever get to senior prom."

And Scott has a getaway motorbike, and Isaac is a cliff-clinging zombie, but that doesn't mean they can't slow dance to broken lyrics in the burnt-out shell of a golden field while the sun crawls into the sky, does it?

It doesn't, and Scott places one hand on Isaac's side, curls the other into the leather of Isaac's shoulder.

Isaac smells clean, not like the blood and destruction of the rest of the world. They dance careful steps full of words, and Scott thumbs an I'm sorry to the side of Isaac's neck, dips him like he would have in their last dance in school, with redredred plastic punch cups and bluewhite lights. They don't say anything, but he knows Isaac understands, in the way he exposes his neck to Scott, an I trust you, how he doesn't shift away from the knife hidden against Scott's thigh, a do what you have to.

The sun rises quicker now, flaring Isaac's curls bright gold, making him dazzle against the painful rays. He handles Scott like he's made of the glazed glass lying in pieces in the abandoned hotel lounge, looks at him the way Stiles had sounded when he'd told him to keep his ass safe. Only more upset, more helpless.

When the song is over, Scott will either kiss his zombie, or shoot him. 

Either way, he'll make sure Isaac's okay,

There is very little else that matters, in this fragile dust-moted world.

**Author's Note:**

> feedback? throat punches? am also @zombielinson on twitter, which just goes to show the more than slight obsession i have with this trope


End file.
